Ronald Koeman must add quality if he’s going to keep Southampton as a Premier League force

New Saints boss Ronald Koeman is looking to add quality to his squad this summer (Picture: Getty Images)

The signing of Dusan Tadic from FC Twente is an excellent start to the Ronald Koeman era – but his acquisition must be the precursor for more quality signings if we’re going to prove the likes of Adam Lallana and Dejan Lovren wrong for wanting to leave.

As much as we hate to admit it for how they’ve treated the club (with the exception of Rickie Lambert), the players that have left or will leave Saints are going to be tough to replace.

But bringing in such a promising talent as Tadic shows that we can still better last season’s eighth position.

We must not stop there though. My concern is that the players that we’ve been linked with recently are not of the ability required to replace those who have left.

Take the reports that we are targeting Tours striker Andy Delort. He scored an impressive 24 goals in the French Ligue 2 last season. But will he really be able to fill Lambert’s boots as our main striker? Probably not.

Will he even be up to the standard of a squad player? Potentially, but let’s not forget that we already have Sam Gallagher, who showed last season that he can be a very capable option.

We’re also being linked with Lorient centre-back Bruno Ecuele Manga. The Gabon international seems to be a solid defender, who played a key part in his team’s eighth place finish in Ligue 1 last season. But again he looks like a squad filler rather than a replacement for Lovren.

I firmly believe that we should focus on quality rather than quantity as we’ve done in recent transfer windows. We mustn’t get sucked into the trap of spending our massive transfer budget on a large number of signings that aren’t of the required quality, much like Tottenham did last season.

Dusan Tadic has become Koeman’s first signing after transferring from FC Twente (Picture: Getty Images)

If Tadic is the replacement for Lallana, then we need players of an equally high calibre to replace Lambert, Lovren, Dani Osvaldo and possibly Morgan Schneiderlin too.

I’d much rather buy five players each costing around £10million, because that will improve the team more than getting in double that number on the cheap. Paolo Di Canio’s tenure at Sunderland proved that signing a large number of players can lead to disaster.

I think bringing in players to make up the squad will also hinder the youngsters coming through. We don’t need to throw money at second-rate signings. We need to keep giving academy players opportunities to play.

As well as Gallagher, I feel that Harrison Reed, Sam McQueen and Lloyd Isgrove can play a part next season, whilst it’s refreshing to see that Koeman is prepared to give Matt Targett the chance to take over from Luke Shaw at left-back.

So with Tadic now at St Mary’s and talent still coming through our youth system, we must focus on getting in players of similar quality to the Serbian so we can continue to progress.